Nature, métaphysique et histoire chez les idéologues

Abstract

Bernard Plongeron : Nature, metaphysics and history among the ideologists. Is Man nature and history ? Here is the question which puzzles the scientists of the " Institut de France " after the thermidorian reaction. Men of " the enlightment era ", having taken part in all political feuds since 1789, they want to endow the world with a " social art ", capable of ensuring the safeguard of individual rights in a society founded on a republican form of happiness. Condillac, they thought, had found a method for the true scientific anthropology, cleared of all metaphysics, either platonician or christian. Their researches in political science, in education in philosophy and even in literary art, compel them, under the Empire, to invent new metaphysics, in order to save the destiny of Man, in his liberty, that is, in his history, source of his " nature